See that? I call it 'super post' because it's 'super' quick!... Sort of like, "NEWS FLASH!"... or a... "THIS JUST IN!"... or maybe... "BREAKING NEWS!"....................
Anyway, just received word from a friend that the 2008 C.O.I. 'Try Life in Another language' commercial I co-directed & animated with Ewen [as Angry Natives] was featured in 'Drawn' Weblog.... "Eeeeexcellent!" Big thanks to John Martz for being kind enough to post it up! Vimeo hits are going nutz & we're getting a lot of great feedback! Thanks to everyone who's taking the time to watch it. Definitely more to come real soon so hope you stick around!
In a brief panic that I'm not keeping up with my weekly posts, I thought I'd just pop this up.
Here are a few designs I did for a- uummm... commercial job...... (BOOOOOO!) I know, originally I wanted to keep my commercial stuff off here just so it stays purely personal (if you know what I mean) but thought well commercial or not they still came from my mind, I still had to envisage & create them same way I would any other, so to me that still counts dagnammitt! but with this I'm extracting the impurity of advertising, branding & product placement with which they were created for... Hopefully you too will see them purly for what they are originally... an outlet & expression of creativity??
I think I'll save an in depth discussion on this topic for another post as I have too much to say on it... Trust me! Anyways here are some designs for those of you 'big Anime eyes' lovers out there. The characters needed to look full on anime style & fit a sort of guitar hero arcade game kinda feel.............. That is all.
It's more an experimental project (than anything else) that came about from a commercial we directed/ animated in 2008. The commercial was a government funded campaign by the C.O.I titled 'Try life in Another Language'. Aimed at encouraging teenagers/ young adults to take up learning a foreign language, the main concept was to make the ad seem as though it was a Hip Hop (French) music video half way through. We decided mixing live action with 2D animated characters/ elements was the way to go.
Cut a long story short we headed off to Paris to shoot the vid which was great as I'd never actually been there before; spent two days there then came back to London to begin the real work! We got the commercial done alright but (as was to be expected) wasn't without a few challenges; such as having to animate everything on 'one's' in order to blend well timing wise with the live action. Other issues were trying to achieve seamless interactions between the animated elements and live action and also matching animation to complex or erratic camera moves. Suffice to say we learned a lot through this technique!
On completion of the ad it received great reviews, had high hit rates on pretty much every social video sharing site it was uploaded to and was even featured in Creative Review online; the sad thing was we were so swamped with other work afterward we didn't get a chance to really explore the medium further... Which brings us to the now! Now we have a little more time on our hands we figured this was the chance to get back to it. So plan of action: head out to town (soho/ central London area) with my Canon DSLR to scout around & take snaps of cool locations we could shoot the L/A in. Here are a few choice snaps of the reconnaissance mission...
I guess to conclude, the main aim again of this is just to delve a little further into the medium and hopefully produce some great looking pieces whilst we're at it. We'll be doing roughly around 5 sequences each, with each clip lasting between 5/ 10secs; Possibly we'll combine them all into a compilation reel once we have enough. Oh here's a linetest of sequence No1:
& the Final:
So the concept behind this once I get the other shots done is a sort of Parkour action chase sequence between two guys; characters using the city as an obstacle course, jumping off buildings, running on roof tops, doing stunts etc (that kinda thing). Well hope you like it? I'm working on sequence 2 right now so more to come very soon! Feel free to drop in comments & feedback... I wont bite >= (
